Chapter XVI: Appendix: To Chapter XIX

PROGRESS OF REFORM FROM THE BEGINNING OF 1849 TO
THE MIDDLE OF 1851.

Having thus carried the general narrative to this important point, I pause to describe those concurrent proceedings[87] which could not be conveniently mentioned in their chronological order, remarking, however, that the chief improvements effected within the period have been mentioned as they took place, and that those of my readers who have little desire to know more on the subject may easily pass over so much as they please of what follows. For convenience I resort to classification.

MONEY ORDER DEPARTMENT.

_Economy, Self Support._

Various measures of economy were adopted; not, for the most part, of sufficient importance to be mentioned in detail, though of considerable value in their aggregate effect. One, however, by its magnitude, claims distincter record, being the release for other duties of such a number of clerks as reduced the Money Order staff, in proportion to its amount of business, by nearly forty per cent.; an economy effected by the mere simplification of accounts and modes of procedure. Two others may be mentioned as curious, the first being a saving of probably about £800 a-year through the substitution for "guard books" of an apparatus invented by Mr. Walliker, one of the clerks (now Postmaster of Hull), and the second the saving of £700 a year by a mere reduction, and that not the first, in the size of the letter of advice. By the various improvements thus introduced into the Money Order Office since it came under my superintendence it was found--the accounts being at length for the first time balanced--that the annual loss of more than £10,000 had been converted into a small gain. It should be mentioned that, in fetching up the arrear of accounts, debts, which ought long since to have been claimed, were found owing by various deputy postmasters, and had to be recovered, in some instances, of their sureties; a proceeding sometimes involving much hardship. In one case, at Bilston, where the payment thus enforced amounted to £230, the postmaster had been dead some years.

_Condition of Clerks Improved._

The Money Order Department being thus made self-supporting, I felt justified in recommending not only a considerable increase in the salaries of the probationary clerks, but also an addition to those of the lowest grade on the staff. I was also enabled to extend and regulate the leave of absence in the department. A few months afterwards, the Postmaster-General thus described the latter measure in the Upper House, reporting afterwards that the Lords were much struck with it:--

"The clerks in the Money Order Office were divided into classes,
and twelve were counted in a class where it was calculated that
eleven could do the work, so that by this means one might be always
absent, and thus every clerk enjoy a month's leave of absence in
the year. Now that was not an unjust nor a severe arrangement, but
much more just and impartial than the old system, by which one
clerk might be away for a considerable time, and another could
get no leave of absence at all. They were allowed to work for one
another, and in case of illness, if the absentee was away more than
a month, he might have his work done by paying for it. This had
been agreed to by all the classes but two; and there was now in the
Money Order Department of the Post Office a case of a gentleman who
had been ill for eleven months during the last two years, and his
colleagues worked for him without a penny of remuneration, knowing
that he really was ill and unable to attend himself."[88]

_New Head of Department._

In the course of this period, on the sudden death of Mr. Barth, the President of the Money Order Office, the vacancy was filled, much to my satisfaction, by the appointment of Mr. Jackson, who had zealously seconded me in improving the department, and who, I am glad to say, retained his post many years, much to the advantage of the service and the benefit of the public.

_A Paradox._

There remains to mention a ludicrous perplexity, showing how easy it is, amidst complicated changes, for even those who have best opportunity of judging, and are most interested in arriving at the truth, to fall into misconception. In the early part of 1850, when we confidently believed that correspondence of all kinds was, as usual, on the increase, we remarked, to our surprise, a falling-off in the number of letters passing through the Inland Office, and speculated much as to its cause. Mr. Bokenham attributed it to a decrease in Sunday letter-writing; but the mystery was at length explained by our simply calling to mind that the natural effect of a recent improvement in the Money Order Department was to relieve the Inland Office of about forty-six thousand packets per week, a number somewhat more than enough to account for the decrease.

GENERAL ECONOMIC MEASURES.

_Clerks in Charge._

There was an abuse demanding correction, of which the following is a specimen. A clerk in the chief office, in receipt of about £82 per annum, was sent to act temporarily as clerk to one of the surveyors, and, for one cause or other, his exceptional employment was prolonged from two months to fourteen. Further, it happened that during two months of the fourteen he had charge of the Gloucester Post Office. By this lucky combination of circumstances, his emoluments for the time were at the annual rate of £452, or between five or six times his ordinary income. I took some steps with a view of putting things on a juster footing, but found the abuse too strongly sustained to allow me much hope of removing it until I should obtain more uncontested authority.

_Prepayment._

I again considered the question of totally abolishing prepayments in money. Both Mr. Tilley and Mr. Johnson (the excellent surveyor of the home district), whom I consulted, agreed in the practicability of the measure, and spoke strongly of its importance, as greatly simplifying, and therefore economising, the mechanism of the department; but, for fear of inconvenience to the public, I hesitated to take the step all at once. To Mr. Tilley, however, I mentioned, in confidence, a plan which I had conceived for dealing with unpaid letters, viz., that wherever posted they should be sent in the first instance to the Metropolitan office, thence to be forwarded to their respective destinations. This arrangement would have tended much to economy, as it would have wholly superseded the "by-accounts," _i.e._, the accounts between one provincial office and another. This device I must myself have afterwards forgotten, for certainly it was never acted upon. Some years later, it was attempted to make prepayment in respect of inland letters absolutely compulsory, but public objection proving too strong, the attempt was abandoned. I believe that this forgotten plan would still be the best step towards attaining the desired end.

_Mail Conveyance._

I discovered instances in which the serious expense of railway conveyance was incurred, when, speed being unimportant, a cheaper mode served equally well. It is obviously of no use to a place that its letters should arrive in the middle of the night, every purpose being answered if they come in time to be included in the earliest practicable delivery. Consideration of this led me to propose, in such cases, the substitution of mail-carts. In one such case this year the effect was an annual saving of about £800, and in one in the following year more than £2000.[89]

_A Summary._

A statement of the savings which, without counting the rejection of applications for needless increase of force or salary, I had secured by the end of 1850, either by prevention of unnecessary augmentation in expenditure, or by positive reductions, showed an amount of nearly £40,000 a year; although I believe my clerks, in hastily preparing the statement (for it was suddenly required) had made several omissions.

_Further Economy in Conveyance._

The surveyor for the South of Ireland had recommended that the night mails to Waterford should be conveyed by a new line of railway between Carlow and that city. The entry on the subject in my Journal (13th of January, 1851) thus concludes:--

"On the Postmaster-General calling for my opinion, I was able to
show that the adoption of such recommendation would cost about
£10,000 a-year, that it would afford scarcely any convenience, ...
but that a day-mail ... might be established at a comparatively
small cost, and would be of great service to Waterford. The
Postmaster-General has adopted my view.

"_May 22nd, 1851._--A short time since certain towns in the West
Riding memorialized the Postmaster-General to despatch a mail
by an existing express train direct to Boston. The Company (the
Great Northern) refused to undertake the service for less than a
first-class fare each trip, or £540 a-year. The Postmaster-General
called for my opinion. I offered the Company £200 a-year; they
refused, and the memorialists were informed that, owing to the
excessive demands of the Company, the mail [a very small one] must
be withheld. This brought public opinion to act on the Company,
and, as I expected, they became suitors to us, first offering to
reduce the charge to about £340 a-year, and ultimately consenting
to charge the bags as parcels. On these terms we shall give a mail
in both directions for about £200 a-year, or for little more than
the third part of what was originally demanded for a mail in one
direction."

RURAL DISTRIBUTION.

On July 15th, 1850, I learned that the Postmaster-General had sanctioned what I regarded as a very important measure:--

"Hitherto no posts have been given except daily posts; henceforth,
when the correspondence will not justify a daily post, one is to be
given thrice, or twice, or once a week, according to a fixed scale,
under which the amount of correspondence is compared with the cost
of the post. Thus, at a comparatively small cost, the postal system
will, I hope, be extended to nearly every house in the kingdom."

This measure, however, though sanctioned by the Treasury, and ordered to be carried into immediate effect, to this day, notwithstanding constant progress, still incomplete, mainly, I believe, through objections on the part of the surveyors to the apparent anomaly of intermittent posts; though the necessary consequence is that many houses, and perhaps even some hamlets, must remain altogether unvisited by the postman.

PACKET SERVICE.

I was asked to prepare a confidential memorandum on the subject of an experimental despatch of the mails to North America from Galway, which I did accordingly, the results of my investigation, however, not being such as, in my opinion, to justify the experiment. I scarcely need add that some years later the course thus deprecated was taken by Government, not indeed in expectation of profitable results, but as a concession to Irish demands; that the attempt was altogether unsuccessful, and besides absorbing a large sum from the revenue, occasioned disastrous loss to all who held shares in the packets.

POSTAL TREATIES.

Although postal treaties with foreign countries had but little direct connection with my particular reforms, yet their indirect bearing was important; and still greater their relation to the general postal interests of the country; so that though, ever since my removal from the Treasury they had been managed for the most part without reference to me, I nevertheless had now frequent opportunities of suggesting improvements, and in the end the arrangement fell almost entirely into my hands.

The Postmaster-General directed my attention to the state of our treaty with France. The British Office had proposed that the international rate should be reduced from tenpence to sixpence, but this was objected to by the French Government, because it was coupled with a demand for an equitable division of postage between the two Offices. It may be remembered that through a blunder made by our Office in 1843 an undue advantage was given to France, which I then estimated at £4000 per annum; but by a modification made subsequently to my reappointment, but entirely without my knowledge, our annual loss had been raised to £8000. I explained all this to the Postmaster-General, and he regretted that I had not been consulted in the matter; he thought, however, that the French Government could not refuse such concession as would at least rectify the latter error.

"_March 15th, 1850._--At the Postmaster-General's house. He is
about to visit Paris, and intends to treat for a reduction in the
international rate. He is anxious at the same time to correct the
blunder in the treaty exposed by me in 1843, under which we lose
many thousands a year in accounting with France for our share of
the postage collected there. After a careful consideration of
the subject, we are both obliged to admit that, if the French
Government should insist upon continuing this part of the treaty,
as they doubtless will, there is now no escape."

The Postmaster-General had been led to suppose that the original error was committed at the Treasury; but I was able to satisfy him that, so far from that being the case, the Treasury had on my report, carefully warned the Post Office on the very point. As the matter stands at the present time (1868), the annual loss in our transactions with the French Post Office, by irretrievable errors, is probably not less than £10,000.

SALARIES AND PROMOTIONS.

On the subject of salaries I found a strange, not to say absurd, discrepancy between form and practice. The clerks were, indeed, very properly arranged in classes, the salaries varying according to position, and promotion taking place as vacancies occurred, on formal attestation of a candidate's fitness for the duties of the higher class; but all this classification, whatever merit it apparently had, was rendered worthless by the simple fact that difficulty of duties did not correspond with rank of class. Thus the Government was really paying £300 or £400 a year to clerks whose work was nowise superior in quality or quantity to that performed by others whose annual salary was but £70.[90] All this I pointed out to Mr. Hayter.[91] He admitted that the odium of rectification, so far as Government usage would allow rectification to be made, should not rest upon me alone, and promised to use his influence to get a Commission appointed for the revision of salaries generally. The Chancellor of the Exchequer hesitated to adopt the suggestion; but, as applications were coming in for particular augmentations which could not be satisfactorily dealt with until some general principle was adopted and reduced to a rule, I obtained authority to press the matter on the Treasury. Although, however, this was done, and although after the lapse of a year the Postmaster-General himself wrote a minute on the subject, yet a second year passed before this important step was taken.

RECTIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS.

As already shown, I had striven to present to the public mind a true statement as to the fiscal results of my reforms, or, to speak yet more comprehensively, as to the real earnings of the Post Office. This struggle was forced upon me by constant attempts to lead the public mind into error on this important point. That which I have repeatedly spoken of as the fallacious return[92] was, in one form or other, ever and anon revived, nor is misconception altogether removed even at the present moment. Of other corrections, also, I have already spoken, and I purpose now to continue the narrative.

"_January 30th, 1849._--Showed the Postmaster-General a requisition
which I have prepared for a return to Parliament, showing the real
earnings of the Post Office by including in the revenue the net
proceeds of the newspaper stamps, and in the expenditure so much
of the packet service as is fairly chargeable against the Post
Office. He has no objection to its being moved for. My object is to
neutralize, if I can, the mischief which Lord Seymour and others
have done by getting returns charging the whole packet-service
against the Post Office."

Notice of motion having been accordingly given by my friend Mr. Thornley, M.P. for Wolverhampton, the Treasury, as usual, referred to the Post Office, to learn whether there were any objection to granting the return. The consequence being that Mr. Tilley came to me, by Colonel Maberly's desire, to show me a note written in reply, in which, to my amusement, I found the opinion given that the return should be withheld, "in fairness to Mr. Hill." Of course I explained the whole matter to Mr. Tilley, and, the supposed obstacle being removed, the return was ordered without opposition, and the duty of preparing it was committed by the Postmaster-General to me.

Of the unfairness of charging the whole cost of the packet-service to the Post Office, I had striking evidence shortly afterwards.

"_March 3rd, 1849._--The newspapers having stated that Government
had contracted with the West India Steam-packet Company for
carrying the mails to the Brazils, I asked the Postmaster-General
if he had been consulted in the matter, and found that he had not;
and further, that there had been no communication with the Office
on the subject."

So that, according to the practice of which I complained, the Post Office was made chargeable with heavy expenses, incurred not only without its request, but without its consent or even knowledge. The inexpediency of such proceedings happened to receive further illustration on the same day; Mr. Cunard calling upon me (of course now too late) to say that he had come to England for the purpose of proposing to undertake the West Indian mails at half the price then paid for their conveyance, thus tantalising us by proving that an opportunity had been lost of saving £120,000 per annum.

In a return called for by the House of Lords, I found that the number of letters for the year had been arrived at by treating the year as consisting of twelve months of four weeks each, so that the total given was that for forty-eight weeks instead of fifty-two. It would have been hardly fair to mislead the House of Lords without doing the same good office to the House of Commons. Accordingly, upon the Lower House calling for a return of the amount of transit postage paid to France, the sum reported, without any note to prevent misunderstanding, instead of being the total amount, was merely the balance of account between the two Offices. After recording this fact, my Journal proceeds as follows:--

"It is a very rare thing for a return to reach me which does not
contain some egregious error."

Fortunately I saw the return before its issue, and it was of course corrected.

"_July 18th, 1850._--Every now and then something almost incredibly
absurd and mischievous in the management of the Post Office turns
up. Some investigations in which I have lately been engaged have
brought to light the astounding fact that for the payment of a
large part of our expenses (hundreds of thousands a year probably)
we have no vouchers, and yet there is a pretence of auditing our
accounts. The fact is, that the salaries and wages of the clerks,
letter-carriers, &c., at the country offices, together with heavy
expenses for carrying mails, &c., are paid by the postmasters,
and allowed in their accounts, but no evidence is required that
the payments are actually made; and instances have occurred in
which postmasters have gone on taking credit year after year for
payments on account of mails, &c., which have been suppressed. The
postmasters at ---- and ---- were both detected in this fraud."

The following shows that, six months later, blundering remained unabated:--

"_January 23rd, 1851._--A _balanced_ account of revenue for the
quarter ending 10th October last has been sent to me containing a
gross error; an advance from the English to the Irish Office being
so managed as apparently to increase the balance in hand for the
_United Kingdom_ by £40,000!"

"_January 25th._--The Accountant General persists in it that his
account is correct. (I wish it were; a means would then have been
devised by which we might readily increase the balance in hand to
any extent.) He will, however, alter it, if I 'desire it!'--as
though it could be a matter of choice whether the balance can be
increased by £40,000 or not."

FOREIGN AND COLONIAL EXTENSION.

_United States._

While my attention was, of course, mainly absorbed in the improvement of our own postal system, I was always glad to hear of corresponding progress abroad, whether in the colonies or in foreign countries.

"_January 8th, 1849._--Some one has sent me, from New York, a copy
of the American Postmaster-General's Annual Report. Their reduction
to two rates at Midsummer, 1845, has been very successful.
Previously to that time the Post Office did not pay its expenses,
and the distribution was curtailed from year to year in a vain
attempt to make it pay. Now with extended distribution and reduced
rates (on the average about half the preceding rates) the Post
Office has a surplus income. The Postmaster-General recommends
making the lower rate (5 cents = 2-1/2_d._) general, and requiring
prepayment. This is the more satisfactory as he opposed the
reduction in 1845."

In short, Congress was so well satisfied with the result of its previous reductions, that, early in the year 1851, it changed what had been its minimum rate, viz., twopence-halfpenny, into its maximum, establishing a three-halfpenny rate for distances under three thousand miles.[93]

_India._

"_December 21st, 1849._--Mr. Porter (Secretary to the Board of
Trade) called with a letter which he had received from Lord
Dalhousie, requesting him to see me with reference to the
introduction of a low uniform rate of postage into British India.
I, of course, promised to assist."

Mr. Porter showed me the letter, and I learnt, much to my amusement, the reason why Lord Dalhousie had not addressed me more directly. He mentioned that he had formerly been acquainted with me; but feared I might by this time have forgotten him. It will be seen hereafter how successfully this first move was followed up.

_France._

Early in 1850 I received from M. Piron a copy of a report showing the results obtained during the past year, the first in France of reduced postage. Though it was a time of great commercial depression, the gross postal revenue had fallen but twenty-two per cent., while the number of letters had increased by thirty per cent. At the same time the proportion of prepayments had risen from ten per cent. to twenty-five, notwithstanding that the charge was alike on prepaid and post paid. This was a remarkable indication of the convenience of stamps, showing that when, in 1839, Mr. Spring Rice proposed, without any reduction of postage, to try "the principle of stamps," his proposal might have proved not so absolute a mockery as I then supposed it to be.

_General Summary._

In short, progress was so general and so rapid that, as I was able truly to remark in my speech at Greenock already referred to, cheap postage was gradually extending throughout the civilized world.

NUMBER OF LETTERS.

In 1849 the year's increase of letters was unusually small, though, perhaps, as great as could be expected in a time of so much political agitation and commercial depression. The increase next year (1850) was but little larger; the two years, however, making up a total of three hundred and forty-seven millions, and raising the increase under penny postage to about 4-2/3-fold.

REVENUE.

The postal revenue also had, by this time, as measured by the gross amount, nearly fulfilled my original prediction, being within £82,000, or less than four per cent., of that received in 1838. That the net revenue had not kept pace with my expectations was due, not only to the various errors in management and obstacles to economy already mentioned, but also, in great degree, to the abandonment of charge for secondary distribution, and the increasing demands of the railway companies.

This subject has been more than once touched on in this narrative, but, perhaps, scarcely enough has been said to make the public fully aware how much the establishment of railways, so beneficial in regard to celerity and exactitude, has increased the expense of conveying the mails. To many the following entry will doubtless be startling, to some, perhaps, incredible:--

"_March 28th, 1851._--I find on a comparison of accounts, that
although the payments to railway companies for 1850 exceed
£400,000, the payments for mail conveyance by ordinary roads were
rather greater in 1850 than in 1838, when there was nothing paid
to the railways; so that the whole expenditure in railways is an
addition to the former cost of carrying the mails. This is the
main cause of the _net_ revenue falling below my estimate--indeed
it accounts for nearly the whole deficiency. The explanation is
not so much the increased weight and frequency of mails (for off
the railway such increase is not great) as the increased celerity
of all our movements, the greater expense of conveyance on the
bye-roads caused by the railways having absorbed their traffic,
and the greater number of branch night mails, owing to the great
extension of the limits of the night-work caused by the use of
railways."

INCIDENTS.

_Mail Robbery._

"_January 2nd, 1849._--Last night a serious robbery, chiefly of
registered letters, one of which contained, it is said, £4,000,
took place between Bridgewater and Bristol, in the up mail."

"_January 3rd._--The thieves (two) are taken; one is a discharged
railway guard. They had the impudence to rob the down mail also the
same night, and the Post Office guard having heard of the previous
robbery, kept a good look-out. The property stolen from the down
mail, including a packet of diamonds, is recovered--not that stolen
from the up mail. There is an interval of about two hours between
the two mails at Bristol, which the thieves probably employed in
secreting the property first stolen. The newspapers are full of the
particulars."

_Theft at Caermarthen._

"_February 2nd, 1849._--Went upstairs to Mr. Ramsey's room to
see the articles which have been stolen by the daughter of the
Caermarthen postmaster. There is jewellery and haberdashery enough
to stock a small shop, and £95 in money. The woman has kept the
letters (200 or 300) from which the articles were taken, so that
many can be restored. It seems that she has indulged her thieving
propensities for seven years."

It appeared afterwards that her object had been to amass such a dowry as would give her good matrimonial prospects.

_Anonymous Contribution._

"_January 23rd, 1849._--Received an anonymous letter (postmarked
Birmingham) containing 10s. in postage stamps 'Towards
penny-postage memorial from a man to (_sic_) poor at the time to
subscribe.'"

_A Striking Result._

The following shows one of the extraordinary results of cheap postage:--

"_June 14th, 1849._--Last week's returns show that 3,100,000
letters [an unprecedented number] passed through the London office
(general and district) in that period. On asking Bokenham for an
explanation, he states that Hatchard, the publisher in Piccadilly,
and a city house connected with him in the publication of a
valuable Bible, are sending out 300,000 prospectuses of their
Bible; they are all in penny envelopes; the postage would exceed
£1,200."

_Improved condition of Officials._

I received the following striking indications as to the amount of relief afforded within the last eleven years to Post Office officials:--

"_September 10th, 1849._--Having occasion to refer to some papers
connected with the Liverpool office of the year 1838, I find it
stated that, after a proposed increase of force, the clerks would
be engaged from ten to twelve hours a day, besides occasional
night-work; also that none of the letter-carriers would walk less
than twenty miles a day, Sundays included. Such a state of things
would now be viewed as monstrous."

_Source of Dishonesty._

It has often been alleged that dishonesty in Post Office servants arises from insufficiency in their salaries. A better explanation would be found in the fact that under a system of patronage[94] men are too often admitted into the service without sufficient inquiry as to character, and are retained there after their conduct has furnished such ground for suspicion as would lead to their being discarded from any well-conducted private establishment. And here it should be pointed out that the evils inherent in the system are often greatly aggravated by injudicious interference from the public, who regard such dismissals as a punishment which ought not to be inflicted without formal proof of some positive offence.

"_February 11th, 1850._--Some months ago I caused ----, an
Inland Office clerk, employed at the Charing Cross office in
money-order business as extra clerk, to be removed therefrom under
circumstances which raised a strong suspicion against his honesty.
As there was no absolute proof of fraud, the proceeding was viewed
as a harsh one, and the man was still continued as an Inland Office
clerk, and very imprudently employed in the registration duties. He
has now been detected in stealing five or six remittances from the
deputy post-masters, amounting in all to about £200."

_A Worthy Promotion._

I had the misfortune in this period to lose one of my best officers; but happily my loss was his gain.

"_December 31st, 1850._--To-morrow Godby succeeds to the vacant
appointment of chief clerk in Colonel Maberly's office. I shall be
sorry to lose him from the Money Order Department, but it would
have been the height of injustice to oppose his promotion."

_My Son's Appointment._

This year (1850) my only son was nominated by the Postmaster-General to a junior clerkship in the Secretary's Department.

_"Household Words" and "Quarterly Review."_

There appeared in the course of the next year (1851), two interesting articles on postal proceedings. The first a lively description from the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, published in the first number of "Household Words;" the second a much longer and more elaborate treatise, though scarcely less amusing, from the pen of Sir Francis Head, published in the "Quarterly Review;" an ample amends for the attack in the same publication ten years before. With both gentlemen I had pleasing intercourse on the occasion, particularly so with the latter, who, requiring more extensive information, and taking great pains to get a correct notion of the leading principles of the whole system, necessarily passed more time in my company. His conversation I found as amusing as his writings.

I may add that his article deals ably with the question of Sunday labour, and very clearly sets forth the mechanism of the office. It will be found in No. 177 of the "Review," or in Sir Francis Head's "Descriptive Essays," Vol II., p. 286.